Estée Lauder Cos. got its start when the founder and her husband sold cosmetics from the trunk of their car. But cosmetics sales today are all about digital and few companies do it better than Lauder. In fact, sales growth has accelerated for the past several quarters which has helped the company's share price jump 60% in the past 12 months.

A successful digital strategy depends on first grabbing consumers’ attention, CEO Fabrizio Freda told Bloomber. After that, companies need to be creative in maintaining that focus.

“Just creating awareness of a brand is not sufficient. You need to engage the consumer today to get the purchase -- and repurchase -- and to get the consumer satisfaction with the product,” Freda said in an interview.

But in order to be satisfied, consumers have to know how to use beauty products. How-to and other content improves the chance of making a sale by 85% if it can grab a shopper’s attention for five minutes. Estée Lauder and its roster of brands like Clinique and Bobbi Brown, also teams up with internet personalities in local markets to offer video tutorials.

To understand the online world, more than 2,500 workers have received e-commerce training, according to Freda. In addition, Estée Lauder's executive team also worked with Facebook, Google and Instagram to learn all that it can about e-tailing. To maintain that mindset throughout Estée Lauder, the bulk of new hires skew toward web and social-media roles, and the online team is made up of 80% women, and 60% could be classified as millennials.